Tiomai's Learning Journey

 I spent this week organising and setting up my classroom. It was overwhelming at first because it was such a new experience. I also did not realise how much of a taxing task it was too.  I did not know where to start, but some logical advice from my mentor was "set up your mat area and tables first then you will see how everything will flow". As she advised, I did exactly that, once the mat area was sorted, everything else slowly came together.  There were many things to think about when setting up this classroom.  Movement around the class Learning areas My area Tables and seating Mat area  One of the things I found challenging (minor) was where I was going to situate myself so that I was able to observe all my students and the outside, also so that students were not facing outside and being distracted with what could be happening outdoors. I did in the end find a good corner where I could also utilise for reading groups too.  The most challengi...

Prior to this engagement, I was both excited and nervous. However, as the meeting progressed I gradually felt overwhelmed and began to feel I was in over my head. It was a lot to take in and process. My mentor was great and had already made templates and plans for both J and me. I think my dilemma was it was too much in one sitting, so instead of making inputs during the meeting, I sat back and listened and asked questions about what I didn't understand. In saying that, there is much I need to get familiar with in terms of the school's local curriculum and the pedagogies that the school is utilising within the school. My next steps: View and familiarise myself with the HCCS local curriculum (Year 2) View and familiarise myself with Stephen Graham's writing (Year 2) View and familiarise myself with DMIC (Year 2)

The last couple of days I sat in an online PLD by Yolanda, where she demonstrated and shared her way of teaching phonics and assessing reading and writing. More importantly, I learned there are many skills required to read and phonics is one of four. It is a skill that is not taught in isolation but together with the other skills necessary to enhance student reading, writing, and spelling levels. After all, reading is not a natural thing like talking or eating, but rather a skill that is taught. The searchlight model she discusses shows how the four skills are needed to decode a text (word level, text level, and sentence level) *Blending - putting the sounds together of a word *Segmenting - breaking up sounds of the word I was overwhelmed by the knowledge Yolanda was sharing. It seemed like a lot in such a short amount of time, it was very dense. In saying this, I have realised that I was lacking so much in teaching literacy.                 ...